A couple of hundred retweets later, and Twitter was out in full force to help get to the bottom of the mystery.

For awhile, it looked like the mystery would remain unsolved. The image was frustratingly small, and Photoshop enhancement proved inconclusive.

Then, suddenly, someone dropped this in the replies:

That photo was taken by Gordon Parks in 1958. Its title is “Showgirls Playing Chess Backstage”. And if you compare that picture to the shapes on the MP’s phone screen, it does indeed appear to match up.

We wanted to be 100% sure, though, so we got back in touch with the tweeter to ask how they found it.

So there you go: despite the initial excitement, the outcome was a lot less thrilling: the MP was simply on Twitter, and he tapped on a photo that had been shared by @historylvrsclub.